


The Old Oak Tree

by SunflowerRose22



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: F/M, Just a very soft fic, One Shot, One friend said it reminder her of a good soup, Post-Canon, Romantic Fluff, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:48:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26242933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunflowerRose22/pseuds/SunflowerRose22
Summary: After weeks of staying cooped up in the castle, Agnieszka and Sarkan decide to sneak out on a short day trip.
Relationships: Agnieszka & The Dragon | Sarkan, Agnieszka/The Dragon | Sarkan
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	The Old Oak Tree

“We should have stayed in bed,” Agnieszka grumbled to Sarkan, her eyes barely registering the outer gate of the citadel. Dawn had yet to break, the lamps were low as they rode past. In the chill of the morning, all she could think about was the warm bed they left behind. To think she could be snuggling against Sarkan right now, basking in his warmth as he made soft muffled protests. Not being jerked in a saddle by a mare who made it very clear she was just as uncomfortable having Agnieszka on her back as she was being there. As if reminded, the mare jerked her head, pulling against the tether Sarkan held. Sarkan gave Agnieszka a withering look. 

“You’re the one who wanted to sneak away,” he reminded her. 

“Only because you shot down my initial idea.”

“You can’t fake a head cold to get out of your presentation. The Willow would see right through it, if she even bothered to check on you.”

“You underestimate me. I can be very convincing.”

“We’ll see how convincing you are when she prescribes you a raw garlic cleansing.” Agnieszka’s stomach churned. Her disgust must have shown on her face for Sarkan smirked. “This way we’ll have several hours before they send the cavalry after us. That is if they don’t try firing blanks first.”

“I take it you’ve been summoned by cannon fire before?” 

Sarkan made no comment, only sniffed. They passed through the sleepy streets of the town across the cobblestones, their horses whickering softly. Only bakers stirred at this hour, the scent of their steamed rolls filling the air. Agnieszka’s stomach growled and she looked longing at the shop as they passed. As if sensing her interest, Sarkan said over his shoulder, “I had the attendants pack a basket.” 

Agnieszka’s chest swelled; she may have suggested this excursion in passing but he planned it in meticulous detail. She suspected he meant it as a kindness, knowing how stressed her twice yearly presentation on the Wood made her. “It’s not like you to aid me in shirking duties,” she teased. He didn’t answer, staring straight ahead with his mouth set. “Have you, by chance, been missing me?” 

“I’ll drop the lead,” he threatened. Agnieszka only laughed. 

“I missed you too.” The last couple of weeks, between arriving in Kralia and preparing for her inevitable appearance before the Regent’s council on the Wood’s developments, had been strenuous to say the least. Too often she’d stumbled to bed far past waking hours and woke to an empty bed with sheets long turned cold. The few times she was able to enjoy Sarkan’s company, they were interrupted by maids with summons on platters. What she wouldn’t give to be back in the valley, where most of her mornings were spent snoozing and convincing Sarkan to stay beside her. An argument she always won. 

They continued on, over the bridge and towards the hill that overlooked the capital. But instead of following the main road like Agnieszka expected, Sarkan turned off towards the south. There was nothing but fields and pastures as far as the eye could see, not a clue of where they were heading. 

Sarkan never did tell her where they were going. That didn’t mean she hadn’t tried gleaning it from him, but that usually led into a lecture about patience. Then she’d wriggle out, feigning she had a meeting with Alosha to finalize her speech. Last night she didn’t return till late, far beyond when Sarkan retired, having spent another night pouring over her notes. 

She really didn’t like presenting anything she found about the Wood. Despite Sarkan’s edits, her notes were never fully satisfactory to the Regent’s council. They never cared about growth or how the Wood was healing after the Queen’s wrath had ebbed. All they wanted to know was about the corruption, what still lingered, and how they could use its power. They’d often ask her if the Wood could be persuaded to work with them against their enemies, namely Rosya. Then, of recent, they’d become interested in knowing whether the heart trees could be used to make more soldiers like their captain of the guard, Kasia. She suspected Solya might’ve had a hand in planting that idea in particular. The last meeting ended on a grim note as the council hinted they had willing participants in the wings whenever she’d completed her studies with animals. As if she’d even begun forcing rabbits and mice into heart trees. The news bothered Sarkan just as much as it haunted her and they both agreed to stave them off as long as they could, until the young prince could step up as king. Trouble was, she didn’t know how much longer she could keep these false pretenses up before they decided to find a different witch for the job.

Sarkan’s horse bumped against her, pulling her from sullen thoughts. “Look up ahead,” he said. A hill grew before them, partly behind a fence and over the fields. Upon it stood a single tree. As they drew closer she could see it was old and gnarled, with part of its bark charred by lightning. Its branches scraped against the sky, near bare of leaves despite being in the early summer. There wasn’t much life left in it. And yet it stood proud on the hill, its roots large and grounded into the earth. 

“We’re going there?” she asked, excitement growing as Sarkan encouraged the horses to step over a low stone wall. 

“I take it you have no objections?” As pleased as a cat, that was the only way to describe the smile he gave her. But she didn’t mind. She was far more pleased he brought her here.

“Never,” she said. In her excitement, Agnieszka dug her heels into the mare’s sides. Her horse bucked, dancing and lurching before trying to lunge forward. Sarkan brought his horse around, forcing hers to follow behind in a slow circle. By then Agnieszka had had quite enough of horses and attempted to hop off. She gracelessly tumbled over with her foot caught in the stirrup. The mare snickered, tail swishing. 

“You’re a maniac,” he said, getting off his own horse to come over and pull her off. “Acting like you’ve never seen a tree before.”

“What I want to know is how you managed to find the only tree for miles around?”

“I wouldn’t say only.” But then he too was looking around at the fields of wheat just beginning to golden at their tips and the otherwise bare hills surrounding them. “It’s an old tree,” he said, not conceding the point as they began to walk up the hill, the horses in tow. “It’s been here for as long as I can remember. The locals claim it's possessed.”

“With what?” There was nothing she could sense from it, other than the slow pulse of life trees tended to hold: immaculate and assured in its existence. 

“The normal nonsense: some say it’s the last tree of an ancient wood, home to an innumerable amount of spirits. Others say it’s haunted by wraiths of lovelorn fools. I once heard someone whisper it’s the resting place of a vengeful king of old.” He trailed off at that last one, for it hit a little too close to home. Agnieszka looked between the tree and him. Sometimes it escaped her just how much Sarkan had lived through, the lifetimes he’d seen, for him to be even older than an oak tree. 

“Would you call this tree an old friend then? Given that you knew it since way back then?” 

“I wouldn’t say knew. It hasn’t changed much over the century.” So maybe the tree was still winning. 

“What about this area?” she asked, sweeping her hand over the fields. “What was it like a hundred years ago?” 

Sarkan stopped, surveying the land. The view was lovely, the city a backdrop to the gentle hills that surrounded it. Wide open fields that rippled like oceans, the specks of cows roaming, the small scatters of houses along networks of roads. He furrowed his brows. “Not all that different.” There was something more to be said, Agnieszka felt, but she let him leave it at that.

At the top of the hill, Agnieszka continued to admire the view. The sun was up, its rays stretching across the fields. The wind took up her braid to tug on her loose strands. She let her braid unravel, her hair spooling out into kinked curls. When she turned to Sarkan, she found he’d already spread out the quilt from the pack in the shade of the trunk and settled between the roots with a book in hand. The basket lay untouched at his feet. Though her stomach growled, she lay on the quilt beside him and propped her chin on her hand. “So tell me, do you often take young ladies out to remote patches of wilderness?” she teased. 

Sarkan turned the page, unruffled. “Do you really think any of the ladies I courted wanted to set foot outside their litters, let alone the inner district?” 

“I suppose not the ladies you sought.” He raised a brow but didn’t look up from the page. She traced the embroidery of the quilt, the looping leaves and starbursts of flowers. She didn’t know why she’d asked. It wasn’t like she cared about Sarkan’s past affairs, all of which happened a century or more ago. Even if his feelings never completely smothered out, time did the work for him. Unless they were wizards. She supposed she never thought of that. “Do you ever miss those days? Back when you lived in the court?”

He did close his book for that, brow furrowing. “Once I’d say I did. But not anymore. Why?” 

“I’ve been thinking, is all.” She’d seen the way he was in court, stiffly formal, irritated by the niceties, and yet completely at ease. He was comfortable with the contrived dance the nobles loved to play, the mockery and the games of cat and mouse. And she wondered what he did in the year he was away, between sorting out the corruption left in court as well as the disturbance in his own heart. Who did he seek comfort with, if anyone? She thought surely he must have, to try to forget her. Whether she wanted an answer or not was another matter entirely. She didn’t care, she said as she gripped the grass. She wouldn’t care. But she still wondered. If one year he up and decided to move back to the court permanently, she knew she would never come along. That wasn’t where she belonged. She rubbed at her eyes, fatigue washing over her. “Don’t mind me, I’m still not fully awake.”

Instead of returning to his book like she thought, he put it aside. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I’m afraid,” she said, sitting up. “What if the court turns against us—against me? You know I’d never put someone into a heart tree, willing or not. The trees don’t deserve to go through that. But I know they’ll press for it, harp on me until either I or their patience breaks. And then what? Oath or not, I’m not going to let them recreate the monster we worked so hard to stop.” The words kept tumbling out with not enough air to fuel them. She took a deep breath. “If the worst should happen tonight, what will you do? With whom would you stand?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” he asked. He brushed his thumb against her cheek. She hadn’t realized she’d been crying. “My crazy girl, I didn’t fight an army, nearly drown in a river, and almost die at the hands of a corrupted queen over some frail sense of duty for my country. I did it for you.” 

“That’s a lie,” she said, wiping her eyes. 

He coughed, sharing her smile. “It’s a sloppy exaggeration at best, but the core of the matter is fully intact. I loved you, long before I knew. And it took me the better part of a year to come to terms with that.” Agnieszka laughed, soft and broken. Sarkan tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ll always stand with you. I won’t be leaving again.”

She put her head on his chest. He stroked her hair. “I’m just so afraid,” she said. “I thought it’d be over. With the queen to rest and the tentative peace, I thought we’d have a few more years at least.”

“It never is,” he agreed. “There’s always another war, always a new threat. Just don’t try to start a new one tonight.” 

“I’m trying my best, alright?” she protested, sitting up. He gave her his favorite skeptical look and picked up his book. She took it from his hands. “You can’t want to read the whole time,” she said, leaning in.

“Oh? What else did you have in mind?”

She tugged him down onto the blanket before snuggling against his chest. “I meant it when I said I wasn’t fully awake,” she muttered, smiling against his shirt as he embraced her. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to remain here. Just for a while.”

“Why am I not surprised?” he whispered, winding his fingers in her hair. Then he settled in, nuzzling the top of her head as her hand settled on the small of his back, gripping his shirt. “As you wish.”

“In my defense, I told you we should have stayed in bed.” Though she had to admit this was nice too. Holding him close with nothing but the gentle whicker of horses and the wind through the oak’s remaining leaves, she felt more sure of him, of them, than she had in a while. He did, after all, come back to her. That was always something to consider. 

**Author's Note:**

> This story was supposed to be smaller, softer, for every time I have to get up early for work and all I can think about for the first two hours is how soft and warm my bed was. Whoops. I’ve yet to actually decide whether Sarkan and Agnieszka are morning people or not. Sarkan feels more of the routine type, perfect sleeping schedule, early to bed early to rise, while Agnieszka feels more like “will get up for chores but come immediately back to bed to nap”. Which means that when they’re sharing a bed, I think Agnieszka tends to wake-up first and proceeds to cuddle Sarkan, which wakes him up briefly to complain. Also I heart-canon that Agnieszka is a messy sleeper and tends to sprawl out while Sarkan doesn’t move much and keeps to his side. 
> 
> The real joke of Sarkan saying “Not all that different” is he didn’t want to unload onto Agnieszka the century of misery that was the 14th century. My history buff friend told me that based on the use of cannons and the armor described in the book, Uprooted’s world is most likely based off of the late 15th century, early 16th century Europe/Poland. And being a hundred plus years old, that means Sarkan grew up during the 14th century—you know, the 1300s. No wonder he’s cynical. He gives Agnieszka the thousand yard stare when she asks what was it like and he says, “There was a decade where it rained a lot and there was no food. And then it rained a little and there was no food. Then the economy collapsed. Then the money wasn’t worth anything. Then there was no money. Then the plague. Then the wars. They never really stopped.” and he takes Agnieszka by the shoulder and says, “You’re living the golden years, my love.”
> 
> Also a side side joke that Sarkan saw the plague and was like, “Nah, man, I’m just going to wait out in the Tower. Peace.”


End file.
